The Other Half of Augusta Hope

Julia said that Diego’s mother was called Lola Alvárez, trying to make the Spanish sounds come out just right. The name made the most gorgeous sounds I’d ever heard. Also, Julia added, she thought Lola Alvárez would end up being a very good neighbour; she had a lovely smile.

But three months later, Julia’s prediction had not come true on account of the fact that there were weeds growing all over the front garden of number 13, which quite ruined the appearance of the crescent, and my mother felt that, if the Neighbourhood Watch man couldn’t say this to Lola Alvárez, who could?

My father was dispatched, but when he came back, he said it hadn’t quite come out how he meant it to.

‘Did you say anything at all?’ said my mother.

‘I said that an English man’s home is his castle,’ he said.

‘Well, I suppose that’s a start,’ my mother said.

‘I wondered if perhaps they don’t know the difference between weeds and flowers,’ said my father. ‘It’s probably different over there.’

He pointed towards the level crossing, as if Spain was behind the railway line.

‘Then I shall tell them the difference, Stanley,’ said my mother.

I was there, cringing, at her side, when she did so, patting her curly hair and going pink on her cheeks even though she had paley-cream make-up on.

‘Your weeds are my flowers,’ Diego’s mother said to my mother, winking, with her hands in the pockets of her baggy dungarees, smiling in the way she had that made her eyes wrinkle up at the edges.

My mother never learnt to wink. Nor did she wish to. Neither did she have any understanding of dungarees for adults.

The weeds went on growing – white, blue, yellow and red – in the garden of number 13, and I loved the look of them.

Your weeds are my flowers – I am still thinking it years after.

I knew I was going to love Diego’s mother from the word go. Diego’s father, Fermín, was large and dark, a top scientist, who had come over to run the huge science laboratory out in the Tattershall Industrial Park. His mother had found a job teaching Spanish in the Sixth Form College in Hinton, and she wore her hair in plaits, with a rose fixed to each elastic. Fermín would pull her face towards him by holding her two plaits, and give her mouth-to-mouth kisses in the kitchen. I found this completely transfixing.

Parfait

My mother used to lean back against the big wall of my father’s dark chest, and he’d put his arms around her, clasped together like a belt at the front. I knew that nothing bad could ever happen to us because he was here, and he would save us, whatever happened.

‘We all need a Saviour,’ he used to say, smiling at us.

‘No we don’t,’ Pierre would answer, and this pained my father, the way he loved to say no to everything.

But now a saviour was coming.

Not down to earth from heaven.

But over the border from Rwanda.

With the name, Melchior, like my father, like one of the three wise kings.

He was a Hutu, like us.

And this Hutu was going to be president of Burundi.

Although Hutu people weren’t presidents, not ordinarily, not ever so far.

I’ll never forget the day that Melchior Ndadaye took power. The hope we felt in our new Hutu president, a hope that blew in the smoke of a thousand fires cooking a thousand celebration chickens, rising above the conical roofs of our huts on the collines above Bujumbura.

‘We have a choice to love the Tutsi even if they’ve killed half the people we loved,’ my father told us. ‘We have a choice to love our neighbour.’

We nodded because we hated to disappoint our father.

‘And who is your neighbour?’ said our father.

‘Anyone God made,’ we said, all together, as we’d been taught. ‘Hutu, Tutsi or Twa.’

‘Hurray for the new president!’ said my father.

‘Hurray for the new president!’ we all echoed.

Little did we know that one hundred and two days later, men from the army – the president’s army – would come to kill their president. Little did we know that his thirty-eight palace guards would make no attempt to defend him.

In revenge, the Hutu massacred the Tutsi. Which, my father said, the president would not have wanted. The conflict cost three hundred thousand lives in the end, and one of those three hundred thousand was my father, who chose to turn the other cheek because, as he’d often told us, someone has to break the chain.

I was eight years old at the time.

I watched the fruit bats flying north in a big black cloud, and I knew I couldn’t bear to be here on the colline without him. Perhaps the bats would fly all the way up the continent of Africa to Europe – and perhaps I could go there too one day.

The countries of Europe were joining together to make one big happy continent. That’s what the Baptists said – and they should have known, being from England and France, themselves. Through the years that followed, in addition to clothes, they brought us second-hand paperback books and atlases and foreign-language dictionaries and old magazines, and I stayed up at night reading about this other world, extending my French vocabulary, learning English and the capitals of European countries.

I read about a pop band called the Spice Girls and a nun called Mother Teresa and a beautiful princess who died in a tunnel in Paris and a woman who spent eighty-one days rowing alone across the Atlantic Ocean.

So it obviously was possible, getting away to somewhere else, if you were brave enough.

I could take my whole family somewhere better. We could leave the colline, catch a boat up the lake, walk through Rwanda to the Democratic Republic of Congo, up through the Central African Republic into Chad, through Niger to Algeria, and then we’d reach Morocco, and I’d seen on the map that there was a tiny strip of sea, thin as a river. We could cross it by boat and go and live in the south of Spain.

Perhaps we would find a new life.

But the years passed, and we didn’t find a new life. Everything went on just the same.

Except something was about to change.

The one thousands were coming to an end.

We sat, all of us, on 31 December 1999, crouched on our haunches, our bare brown feet caked in red mud, looking expectantly over Lake Tanganyika, whose waters flowed over our borders and out beyond, imagining that something extraordinary might happen as we crossed over at midnight to the new millennium.

‘It’s the longest lake in the world,’ I said to my brothers and sisters, trying to copy my father’s jolly tone of voice, though the exact timbre of it was fading away from me, six years from his death. I found it hard to conjure it at night inside my head but I could still see his big wide smile and his twinkling eyes.

‘It’s the second deepest and the second largest, after Lake Baikal in Siberia,’ I said. ‘It holds 18 per cent of the world’s fresh water – and the fish in the lake are so special and so colourful that they are sold all around the world to rich men who like to keep them in glass boxes in their dining rooms.’

‘Do soldiers break in and smash the glass boxes?’ said Zion.

‘They don’t need soldiers in those countries,’ I said, authoritatively – I was fourteen years old now, my voice had broken and I was growing body hair. ‘No, these rich men live in peace.’

‘Peace?’ said Zion, creasing his brow.

And he and I walked across the hillside, looking up at the sky.

‘Let’s imagine that the clouds are boats,’ I said, crouching down and putting my arm around Zion’s shoulder, just as my father did with me when I was a little boy. ‘And let’s imagine that they’ll dip down to earth, Little Bro, and we’ll climb in, you and I. And, you know what? We’ll float right across the border of Burundi and way over the whole continent of Africa to the sea.’

‘Will we really?’ said Zion.

‘Really really,’ I said, and I wished it was true. I wished I could make things not as they were. I wished I could save Zion from the place where he’d been born.

Augusta

My mother had always been fond of knitting, sewing and tapestry, and she tried to interest us in terrible craft projects where you made stuffed owls or knitted blankets for dolls.

She offered a special service for Stanley Hope Uniforms, which involved embroidering names onto PE bags, pencil cases, aertex shirts, anything really.

The minute we were born, our names were sewn and embroidered and painted and framed, with creeping flowers twisting and turning on the ascenders and descenders.

Barbara Cook at number 2 was inspired by my mother’s craft work, and it was this that sent her off to art classes, and this that caused her to start wearing wrap-around Indian skirts, which didn’t go well with her leather slip-on court shoes, flesh-coloured tights and anoraks.

Helen Dunnett at number 3 (who had a very thin grey whippet) liked to crochet things such as little boys’ ties, babies’ bonnets and holders for toilet rolls – and even a coat for the whippet, in pale green.

The craft craze must have been contagious because before you knew it, over half of Willow Crescent’s women were crafting away in their spare time, creating rag dolls, candles in the shape of triangular prisms, baby clothes, three-dimensional special-occasion cards – you name it, they made it.

My mother said her dream was to have a craft room, like my father had a study, but, although he was out of the house six days a week, he never once offered to share.

His study (the third bedroom) was the only part of the interior of the house of which he was in charge. His desk was immaculate, his dark green files hung in alphabetical order and his cork boards were papered in taut rectangles. He was also in charge of the double garage and the extra single garage and the garden, in which not one thing was out of place.

It was Barbara Cook who had the idea of the Willow Crescent Craft Fair. Everybody agreed that Number 1 would be the best location for it, not only because of our larger-than-average garden, but, in the event of rain, our immaculate double garage, with the additional single garage for the side shows, which the children would organise.

‘We’ve been thinking of a way to raise funds for the farm school where Graham Cook goes,’ said my mother to my father. ‘We all thought a Craft Fair would be a good idea.’

‘Lovely,’ said my father. ‘That would give the Cooks a bit of a boost.’

‘Yes, exactly,’ said my mother, allowing this burst of good-heartedness to flourish before slipping in the suggested venue.

‘I wouldn’t want everyone tramping over the carpets to use our toilet,’ said my father.

It was some hours later, when my mother and father had undergone several circular arguments and become rather tetchy with each other, and by which time Julia and I had gone to bed, listening out anxiously, in case our parents were about to get divorced, that we heard my father exclaim, ‘I shall damn well build an outside toilet.’

My father laboured on this outside toilet through the spring and summer, and when it was finished, he painted it, and bought a special red/green lock to show if the toilet was vacant or occupied. My mother made an arrangement of dried flowers for the shelf, and bought one of Helen Dunnett’s crocheted toilet-roll holders – in what Helen called burnt russet.

After that, my father looked a little lost on Sundays, as if some great purpose had been removed from his life.

My mother and her friends held committee meetings every five minutes around our kitchen table, and the children started planning side shows like Count the Number of Sweets in the Jar or Guess the Weight of the Cake.

I offered to sort through the second-hand toys and put prices on them, which, I discovered, my mother would over-write in permanent marker. Amongst them, I found the ugliest rag doll with yellow plaits, a brand-new Peter Rabbit and a drawn-on doll with one arm and one leg, and, in my fury about the wasted time I’d spent pricing the toys, I pulled off her remaining limbs, feeling strange. I put her torso and her separated arm and leg in my bedside drawer, and then I wrote a story where a dead baby was wrapped in cellophane like the un-used Peter Rabbit.

I asked Julia to read it so somebody would know how terrible I was inside my mind where you don’t always have control of things. She hesitated, breathed deeply and said, ‘Everyone has strange thoughts. And maybe you’ve read too many horrible things about Burundi. But we’ll burn it anyway, shall we, Aug? Because that would also be quite fun, don’t you think?’

I did think, but now I wish I hadn’t made her read that story.

I hear her childish voice so clearly, all these years later, that it makes me jump.

I hear her trying to draw me towards the fun, towards the joy, away from the darkness.

There’s a pale moth fluttering towards the light of the candle, here, at the front of the caravan, in the dusk, where I’m writing. I bat her away. She has dark squiggles on her wings, like letters written on sepia paper.

Julia went inside for matches, and we crept to a lovely hidden place behind the shed – I can feel the rough texture of the wooden slats which pulled threads out of our jumpers when we brushed against them and I can see the wire fire basket hung with spider webs. There, in a lovely empty pocket of time, the sort of pocket reserved for brothers and sisters, she and I made a little bonfire in the wire cage, and we stood together, in the warm evening, watching the pages of the story turn into flames.

My father went hysterical when he found us.

I said it was all my fault.

Julia joined in the blame, using a very soft, calm voice at his rage, like a warm shower.

‘We’re sorry, Dad, we’re sorry,’ she said, with her little heart-shaped face crinkled with sorry-ness.

It came to me then, and it comes to me now, that I didn’t feel sorry at all.

One thing the committee could not talk about, as Barbara Cook was running the Craft Fair, was what Graham Cook would do on the day, as, although nobody said it, they all thought the strange drowning noises he made might put people off buying.

But one Saturday, Barbara Cook went to visit her sister, so the committee arranged an ad hoc meeting. My father walked in and out of the kitchen, hoping the meeting would soon be over, practically before it had begun.

‘Perhaps Barbara’s brother might come over and look after Graham at the Craft Fair,’ said my mother. ‘He’s very good with him.’

My father shook his head.

‘He’s unpredictable,’ he said, as he passed through. ‘We wouldn’t want him running amok in the garden.’

‘I would be very happy to look after Graham Cook,’ I said. I knew that Graham was five years older than me, but, in the circumstances, I thought this might still work.

‘Oh no, darling, you couldn’t possibly look after Graham Cook,’ said my mother and father, practically in unison, as my father passed through again. ‘You’re only ten.’

‘I’m nearly eleven,’ I said.

‘If Graham Cook’s angry,’ said Hilary Hawkins, ‘he loses his rag – it’s quite frightening, to be honest.’

In the end, Barbara Cook told the Craft Committee how much Graham was looking forward to the Craft Fair, and on the day, he sat down at the end of the garden in a shady corner next to the candle stall with his red bus, making drowning noises and putting people off coming near.

I went to the second-hand toy stall and bought a red plastic bus, and I sat with my red plastic bus right next to Graham with his red plastic bus, so that holding a red plastic bus would seem more of a normal thing to do. I considered whether I should also make some drowning noises and shoot my limbs out, but came to the conclusion that this might cause a bit too much of a commotion.

Graham Cook and I sat with our red plastic buses in the unexpected sunshine, and he seemed comforted and hardly made any strange noises at all. Julia couldn’t move from her position at the Lucky Dip over by the outside toilet, but she smiled at me in that way she had.

My father came over to me and, once Barbara Cook was out of earshot, he said under his breath, ‘For God’s sake get up, Augusta. You’re making a fool of yourself – and people will think you’re a bit …’

‘A bit what?’ I said.

‘A bit …’ said my father. ‘A bit, you know, not all there. Spasticated.’

‘I’m staying right here,’ I said, ‘in solidarity with Graham Cook.’

Then my father took hold of my upper arm and dragged me upwards with a big tug, which made me feel as if my arm and my shoulder were going to come apart from each other, and in a strange tight voice, quite menacing, he whispered in my ear, ‘Get over to the Lucky Dip and help your sister.’

Graham Cook moaned and wailed and tried to run away, so Jim Cook had to hold him in an arm lock.

I shut myself in the outside toilet and cried and cried at the shock of it all, and when I came out, with my red bus, there was a long queue, and Angela Dunnett said, ‘We were about to call the Fire Bwigade. We thought you were locked in.’

I felt really bad that Angela Dunnett was being so nice to me, and had gone and bought me a cupcake with butter icing from the cake stall to help cheer me up, and I determined that I would never ever again make jokes about the way she said r.

My friend, Ian, turned up and he bought the ugly ragdoll with the yellow plaits as a joke, and we went behind the outside toilet and had a tug-of-war with her – and all her stuffing fell out of her middle.

Then I went and stood next to Julia at the Lucky Dip holding the red bus. Julia didn’t ask me why I’d been crying. She just reached for my hand, but when my father came by, his face all tense and contorted, she let it go. He did another loud whisper in my ear which said, ‘Put that damned bus down.’

Julia bit her lip and she puffed up the sawdust in the Lucky Dip to bring the remaining prizes to the surface.

All the happiness had seeped out of her face.

Parfait

I remember the day I met Víctor, the Spanish priest, out on the road on his bike. We started talking, and I found that things came pouring out of my mouth, things I’d been storing up inside, not knowing what I could do with them.

I told Víctor that, the week after Melchior Ndadaye was assassinated, my father, Melchior, died too.

‘The soldiers came to our colline,’ I said. ‘And my father turned his cheek because he wanted to break the chain.’

I told him that the next time they came, Wilfred the English missionary stepped in front of our pregnant neighbour, Honorine, so that the soldiers would shoot him instead of her.

‘I’ll never forget the way he was smiling, though he was dead,’ I said. ‘He was lying there amongst the daffodils his mother had sent over from England. I felt so bad about what our country had done to her son.’

Víctor nodded.

‘My mother went with the women to the rubbish dump,’ I said, ‘and they made daffodils out of old tin cans to put around his grave.’

I took a deep breath because I didn’t want to speak about Claude.

I’d told Claude to run when the soldiers came with flaming torches, but as I counted everyone in, behind the bush by the stream, he wasn’t there. We found his burnt body too late, cowering in the corner of our hut.

‘Wilfred’s still got the rope around his ankle,’ I said to Víctor. ‘The one that used to join onto Claude’s ankle. He won’t take it off, and I can’t ask him why because he won’t speak any more. Not a word since Claude died.’

I told him that my mother wasn’t feeling too good, but she wouldn’t go and see the doctor because all doctors were Tutsi and she didn’t trust them.

Things went on pouring out of my mouth, and Victor went on nodding.

He told me some things about his life. How he was setting up a school for deaf and blind children, up the hill, bringing them out of the shadows so that they wouldn’t feel ashamed of themselves any more. He invited me to come and see them, and I shook their hands, and Víctor gave me mango fruit chopped up in porridge in the little kitchen of his house.

‘Is Spain really over there?’ I asked him. ‘At the top of Africa and over the sea?’

I felt light coming into my body at the thought of this country that was real and full of peace and sunshine, and not so very far away.

‘It really is over there,’ said Víctor.

‘What’s it like?’ I asked him.

‘There’s sea pretty much all the way round, and people take picnics to the beach in the summer, and go swimming. We have festivals in the street at Christmas and Easter, when the men wear felt hats, and the women wear spotty dresses and roses in their hair – and we have this dance called flamenco.’

‘Did you ever dance flamenco?’ I asked him.

Víctor nodded.

‘I wasn’t always a priest,’ he said, laughing.

‘Is it like our dancing?’ I asked.

‘It goes something like this,’ said Víctor.

He got up off the little wooden chair and threw his hands in the air, and he started to dance about, with his hips swaying and his feet stamping.

‘The woman dances like this …’ he said, and now he was really laughing, and so was I, and he looked very funny with his big grey beard and his pinky skin, and his baggy trousers, swaying his hips and turning in circles and swishing out his imaginary dress.

A man called Nelson Mandela came on the radio.

Víctor stopped dancing and turned the volume up.

This Nelson Mandela had a voice you didn’t forget – kind of soft but hard underneath – like wool with steel inside it.

Nelson Mandela had made a suggestion to President Buyoya that the Tutsi and the Hutu could take it in turns to lead the country because this might stop Burundians fighting each other and dying all the time.

Víctor clapped his hands and said, ‘Yes! Yes!’

I said, ‘It’s so obvious. Why didn’t anyone think of it before?’

‘Because nobody likes to share power,’ said Víctor.

Augusta

Power-sharing was proving a trial in Willow Crescent as, a year after the first Craft Fair, the committee prepared, with renewed vigour, for the second.

Janice Brown brought up the subject of whether the Craft Fair really was the best place for Graham Cook, and Barbara Cook got straight up from the table, and, as she did so, her wrap-around Indian skirt started to unwrap itself, revealing her large white pants and her spongey right buttock.

A terrible silence fell on the committee meeting, as the front door slammed shut.

My mother said, ‘Oh dear.’

Then the others all started saying that when you are on a committee you have to have difficult conversations, and you couldn’t hide from the truth, which was plain to see, that Graham Cook put off buyers from buying.

Julia and I were sitting there, good and quiet. She was pressing flowers in a wood-framed flower press, and I was leafing through my book of Latin phrases, when out of my mouth came the words, ‘If this Craft Fair is to help Graham Cook, then he might rather you didn’t bother so much about how much money his school got, and you just let him come.’

Julia raised her hand, the way my mother used to do when my father didn’t brake early enough in the car.

My mother sat completely still as if someone had pressed pause on her, before Hilary Hawkins said, ‘Nobody ever told me that this was about raising money for Graham Cook’s school.’

‘Who got the money last year?’ I said to my mother. ‘Didn’t it go to Graham Cook’s school?’

Now Julia took my hand in hers, which meant shut up.

‘I’m not sure,’ said my mother. ‘I’m not the treasurer. The treasurer is Janice Brown.’